The Queen Theater has been through many transformations since opening its doors as a playhouse in 1936, with a grand marquee that towered over Waialae Avenue in Kaimuki.

It soon expanded its offerings to include contemporary films. But a new owner’s decision to start showing X-rated pornographic films led to a series of police raids for promotion of pornography that prompted the facility to close in 1985.

For nearly 40 years since, the theater has languished, despite neighborhood calls to revitalize the dilapidated building or bring it down.

Honolulu City Council Chair Tommy Waters, who represents the area, began the process to condemn the theater three years ago but tabled the effort to give the owner time to renovate the property on her own. Citing a lack of progress, he’s kickstarting the process again.

“I’m really happy that the city is moving ahead on the condemnation process,” Kaimuki resident and Friends of Queen Theater member Mahlon Moore said. 

Decades Of Delays

The 850-seat Queen Theater has occupied a plum location near the top of Waialae Avenue for nearly 90 years, going from grand movie palace to eyesore. Its hollowed-out marquee and peeling yellow and gray signage contrasts with the rest of the neighborhood’s lively restaurants, shops and yoga studios.

Kaimuki residents, worried about crime and eager for more entertainment options, have lobbied for the Queen Theater to be renovated for years, but they’ve been powerless without action from its reclusive, longtime owner Narciso Yu.

Waters has introduced a resolution to ask the city to acquire the property for public use, including the use of eminent domain if necessary.

The vision is for the Queen to once again become a space for performing arts and film. 

“It would be really nice to have a center for creative storytellers right here in our own city, in beautiful Kaimuki,” Jeanette Hereniko, founder of Hawaii International Film Festival, testified during a City Council committee hearing Friday.

Yu’s daughter Adoree Yu, who is now the owner of the theater, was the only person opposing the city’s plans to condemn the theater during Friday’s meeting of the council’s committee on executive management. She acknowledged the lack of progress but said she has a three-phase plan to restore the building over the next two years.

The plan would begin with exterior renovations that Yu projected could be finished by May, followed by interior renovations to the lobby and second floor that could be finished by the end of 2025 and finally renovations to the auditorium that could be finished by the end of 2026.

Rising Costs

She said the delay over the past three years was because both of her parents were diagnosed with serious illnesses.

“What is different now is that I have full authority to make decisions regarding the Queen’s redevelopment, and have a financial plan in place to pay for the work that is needed,” she said.

But many residents say these stop-starts have gone on for too long and it’s time for the city to take matters into its own hands.

“There are kids now that are grown that have never seen the theater in operation. And they’re like, adults with children of their own now,” Moore said. “So that really puts it into perspective how long that theater has been sitting there unused.”

Moore said this latest step is the most progress he has seen since getting involved with the Friends of Queen Theater more than 15 years ago.

Waters encouraged Yu to keep working on renovations, but he expressed skepticism about whether Yu can keep up with the financial investment and said the city would move forward with the condemnation process. The resolution must next be heard by the full City Council, which next meets on Dec. 11.

“I have no doubt that you are sincere about this theater,” he said. “My concern is that – based on everything that we’ve talked about over the years – that you’re going to end up losing money on this project,” he said.

Yu estimated the renovation costs to be about $800,000. Hereniko, the HIFF founder, testified she thinks that’s unrealistic and the real cost would be millions of dollars.

In addition, the theater’s assessed value has climbed from about $2.3 million to about $3.2 million in the past 10 years, almost all from its increasing land value. Property taxes have risen by almost a third, from about $30,000 per year to about $40,000.

Correction: An earlier version of this story gave the land value rather than the total value.

Attorney Ryan Toyomura, who represents the theater’s corporation Queen Management, declined to comment on why the Yu family hasn’t sold the building and advised Yu to not speak to media beyond what she said in testimony.

Location, Location, Location

For decades, the theater showed all kinds of popular contemporary films, specializing in certain studios like Disney.

“When I was probably — I don’t know — 17 or 18, they had a revival of Disney’s ‘Fantasia’ at the Queen,” Honolulu-based theater historian Lowell Angell said.

Behind the opulent signage and marquee, he said, the Queen was just another neighborhood theater.

“The inside was very plain. There really wasn’t much decor to speak of. And the auditorium was just as plain — they had a painted fire curtain, but that was about it,” he said. “I mean, there really was no decor. So it was like a box — just a plain box.”

Lowell, who helped found Friends of Queen Theater, sees potential in the theater as being a place for entertainment again thanks to its size and central location.

Its valuable location was also a factor in its decline. 

By the time Narciso Yu bought the Queen Theater in 1978, his business, Yuclan Enterprises Inc., was already showing X-rated films in six other Honolulu theaters in downtown and Waipahu.

Those hadn’t attracted much opposition, but many people balked when he began showing porn films in family-friendly Kaimuki. Neighbors complained that their children would walk by the theater’s explicit posters and movie titles on their way to school, prompting action from the City Council.

The City Council’s attempts to shut down the theater in response to community outrage ran into legal trouble. Council members and then-Mayor Frank Fasi passed a law in 1979 that would have revoked the business license of anyone found guilty of “promoting pornography” and would have shut down offending theaters for a year.

Federal judge Samuel P. King struck down the law in 1980, saying it was unconstitutional because it would have stopped the showings of films not yet found to be obscene. 

It was a victory for the Queen Theater. But police raids continued to target its employees for showing lewd films, culminating in the massive raid at the end of 1985 that led to the theater’s closure.

Police confiscated and burned 408 pornographic films owned by Yu, and in court documents he agreed to stop promoting pornography, the Star-Bulletin reported.

Yu maintained ownership of the theater, but attempts to revitalize it through things like regular performances of the cult classic musical “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” staged by Honolulu’s legendary nightclub owner and producer Jack Cione proved insufficient.

Looking toward the future, the city’s takeover of the Queen Theater could take about a year and a half, Honolulu Managing Director Mike Formby testified.

He compared it to a similar takeover this summer of an abandoned house on Pensacola Street.

It’s unclear what would happen once the theater is in city possession.

City spokesman Ian Scheuring said in an emailed statement that the theater would be reserved for public use, “but it is too soon to have determined specifically what the property in question would be used for.”

“The City would typically work with the community, the neighborhood board and the members of the Honolulu City Council to determine the best possible use,” he wrote.

The Friends of Queen Theater likely wouldn’t take over operations, Moore said. Its purpose is just to advocate for better use of the theater. Through fundraisers, the group has collected a few thousand dollars to contribute to renovations, though Moore added that the group isn’t as active as it used to be.

He estimated that the group ran out of stamina about 10 years ago.

“When Adoree came into town – we all of the sudden had hope that something was going to happen when she took over,” he said. “And then nothing’s happened.”